Driving down to the Marines is making me a bit dizzy today…

(5:17) Level 2 ('Halo') on Legendary. I've done plenty of Banshee battling movies before, but this one's a bit different. Five plays, each including a Banshee assisted Warthog stunt on the way into battle! As such, half the fun is in the freaky stunting and the driving generally (various routes are demonstrated). I'm using the same defence location as seen not long ago in BCM157. And incidentally, if you enjoy the stunts, you may like to go back a hundred movies to check out BCM66!

Released December 18th 2015, gameplay recorded September 2nd-3rd 2015.

00:02 (Play 1) Emerging into the valley, the circling Banshees can be seen. One of them peels off to the left, and that's the one which latches on and eventually fires a fuel rod shot (it's the same Banshee in all five plays). On this occasion I go for the main part of the hump, and the blast lands behind just as we're reaching the top, causing an excellent somersault. I eventually shake the pursuer by going between some trees. In the combat phase I tag one Banshee but miss the other three times, before finishing it with my plasma rifle.

01:22 (Play 2) This time I go over the left end of the hump, which is where the somersault occurs. My subsequent driving route is different from before. Indeed, I specifically wanted to show different routes on all my plays. During the combat phase the final pilot gets ejected. He appears to get killed by a plasma grenade blast, though he sheds no blood.

02:19 (Play 3) Again I go over the left of the hump, hoping to get boosted there, but it seems that the Banshee isn't quite ready to fire yet. But it stays on our tail and delivers a blast about halfway down the hill, just as my passenger is whooping after a jump. Getting a somersault on the hill was very rare when I was working on this stuff. The blast hurts the Marine quite badly, and then he's taken down to a single health bar by plasma fire; so as soon as he dismounts, he goes raging off. I miss an attempted tag on each of the Banshees, but weapon fire brings them down and the sniper survives.

03:21 (Play 4) This time I take a sharper left, to pass to the left of the hump. I get a good slow somersault, landing perfectly on the wheels. That was the best somersault I got with this route. In subsequently trying to evade plasma fire, I take a precarious route along the cliff edge, going further around than the partial cliff route used in play 2. As for the Banshee combat, I tag both at close range.

04:15 (Play 5) Going over the left of the hump, the hog actually takes a direct hit, and the somersault is fairly tight and fast. In the subsequent driving I try some zigzagging, but the Banshee sticks with us so I eventually do a little spin so the pilot overshoots. Of course, I could've lost him earlier with that sort of manoeuvre, but the pursuit makes for excitement. In the combat phase I tag both Banshees. I put this play last because of the ending, where Johnson and a Marine say something. In the many battles I did, victory lines such as that were surprisingly rare.

Closing remarks Originally I'd meant BCM166 to be another cavern megabattle movie, and I did quite a bit of work on that. But eventually I decided to put it aside for probably more work later, and I did this movie instead, which I already had the footage for. I did the gameplay during the time I was working on BCM157. It was sort of a side-project I got into along the way.

If I recall correctly, these five plays were all done using a save I derived from another I'd been using. I had a pistol and plasma rifle and I'd let the Banshees sink a bit, before getting a new checkpoint in the exit passage. On one of the plays a stunt must've occurred, and then I started trying for stunts, driving in ways which encouraged a Banshee to latch onto us and subsequently unleash a fuel rod shot. I think my initial idea was that I could get a few stunt clips to use in 'freakiness and fun' movies; but soon I realized there was scope for putting plays together to make a whole stunt-themed Banshee battling movie. With that in mind, I tried to get plays with stunts in various places, and I also used different driving routes and evasions.

Getting a good stunt was rare though. Often there was no close pursuer, and even when there was, often there was no good fuel rod blast. When the hog did get blasted in a suitably powerful way, landing neatly on the wheels wasn't terrible likely either! So all in all, it took a lot of playing to make this movie.

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